In 1999, Neale Donald Walsch wrote three little books, each focusing on different areas of life: Neale Donald Walsch on Relationships, Neale Donald Walsch on Holistic Living, and Neale Donald Walsch on Abundance and Right Livelihood.

Now, 10 years later, Walsch has revised these three books and combined them into one volume. In this little book, Walsch provides his readers with the basic principles for satisfying personal relationships, an inspirational approach to the real meaning of money and prosperity and how they apply to the secret of happiness, and the basics of integrated living—how to live with joy and harmony.

This book presents the core teachings found in the Conversations with God series. Warm and inspirational, Walsch's words provide hope and help for readers living in a particularly challenging time.

Excerpt

Introduction

Relationships are the most important experience of our lives. Without it, we are nothing.

Literally.

That is because, in the absence of anything else, we are not.

Fortunately, there is not a one of us who does not have a relationship. Indeed, all of us are in relationships with everything and everyone, all of the time. We have a relationship with ourselves, we have a relationship with our family, we have a relationship with our environment, we have a relationship with our work, we have a relationship with our work, we have a relationship with each other.

In fact, everything that we know and experience about ourselves, we understand within the context that is created by our relationships. For this reason, relationships are sacred. All relationships. And somewhere within the deepest reaches of our heart and soul, we knoww this. That is why we yearn so for relationships - and for relationships of meaning. It is also, no doubt, why we have such trouble with them. At some level, we must be very clear how much is at stake. And so, we're nervous about them. Normally confident, competent people fumble and fall, stumble and stall, crumble and call for help.

Indeed, nothing has caused more problems for our species, created more pain, produced more suffering, or resulted in more tragedy, that that which was intended to bring us our greatest joy - our relationships with each other. Neither individually nor collectively, socially nor politically, locally or internationally have we found a way to live in harmony. We simply find it very difficult to get along - much less actually love each other.

What's this all about? What's up here? I think I know. Not that I'm some kind of a genius, mind you, but I am a good listener. And I've been asking questions about this for a very long time. In the 1980s, I began receiving answsers. I believe those responses have come from God. At the time I received them, I was so impacted and so impressed that I decided to keep a written record of what I was being given. That record became the Conversations with God series of books, which have become bestsellers around the world.

A small group of about forty people gathered at a home just outside San Francisco, California a few years ago to explore with me more deeply what those books had to say on the subject of our relationships with others. I shared with the group all that I understood about the material on relationships that appears in the Conversations with God dialogue and answered questions as they came up. The synergy of that afternoon produced an elecrifying experience, resulting in an open flow of wonderful wisdom that, I am happy to say, was captured on videotape and audiocassette - edited versions of which have since been made available to the public.

What you will find here is a transcript of that event. I have made a few tiny edits in order to update it to my present life circumstance, but no subtantiative changes have been made. Thus, the material reads in a much more free-flowing - and, I think, more stimulating - style than text that is written for the printed page. And because this book format is not limited by time and production constraints, we were able to include here material not found in the original video or audio versions, which neccessarily had to be shortened for production reasons.

Essentially, what God tells us in Conversations with God is that most of us enter into relationships for the wrong reasons. That is, for reasons having nothing to do with our overall life purpose. When our reason for relationships is aligned with our soul's reason for being, not only are our relationships understood to be sacred, they are rendered joyfull as well.

Joyful relationships - ah, yes. For far too many people, that phrase sounds almost like an oxymoron - a self-contradicting, mutually exclusive term. Something like military intelligence or efficient government. Yet it is possible to have joyful relationships, and the extraordinary insights in the Conversations with God book shows us how.

Here are those insights, as I have received them and understood them. I share them with you here in humility, straight from the Take It For What It's Worth Department, with the hope that if even one comment opens a new window - or throws wide a doorway - to greater happiness, you will have been served.